


Wither

by SunflowerSales



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canary Wharf Battle, Episode: s01e04 Cyberwoman, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Gwen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunflowerSales/pseuds/SunflowerSales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack wasn't always the most compassionate member of the team, but this was cold even for him. </p><p>Or, Gwen finds out why Jack threatened to kill a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wither

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I watch this I can't help but think about how he saw Rose's name on the list of the dead and how bad that affected him. Like, no wonder he reacted like that.

After everyone else leaves at Jack's command, Gwen calls up Rhys to let him know her hours are extended again and defies her boss. He's drinking scotch alone in one of the few clean rooms, eyes unfocused and staring at the corner of a wall and she enters without permission. Though he doesn't look up, he knows she's there. "We need to work on your stealth, sweetheart," is all he says when she takes her seat next to him, but he doesn't tell her to go home. "Heard you from a mile away."

She ignores him, folds her arms across her lap. "You wouldn't have shot him," she says, matter-of-fact because they haven't been together long, but she knows him. Knows him better than anyone else, apparently, since from what she's managed to gather tells her she's the only one who knows he can't die. She can't even imagine how that must feel. "But for a moment there you really thought you could, didn't you?"

After a moment of doing nothing, Jack leans over and puts down his glass. "He put us in danger," he answers. "Your idiot of a boyfriend might think we all had a mass hallucination, but the Cybermen were real and they were ruthless. Took over from a parallel dimension that Torchwood decided would be an awesome idea to crack open. Anything human is ripped from their body and you can't reason with them. Can't talk them down. I heard stories of people accidently breaking their emotion suppressers and once those things realized what they became, they'd be so horrified they killed themselves."

"Were you there?" she asks because she has to understand. "At the Battle of Canary Wharf. You talk like you were."

He stands abruptly and faces away from, crossing her arms and shifting his gaze at a new point of nothingness. "No," he says after a pause, voice and body tense. "But the survivors drew up two lists when it was done - who died converted, or 'upgraded,' and who just...died - and I had this friend. And she was just - God. She was brilliant. Beautiful and way too young to die, only twenty or twenty-one. Her mom was down on that list too. I faced down these Cybermen at a different location, but they killed her. I have the full report. Not even a body was recovered."

 _Mass hallucination._ Ha. Now she feels silly even entertaining the thought. "I'm so sorry, Jack," she says and tries not to imagine what he must've felt like seeing the thing that killed a girl he talks about like that. This is a first for him, or at least from what she's heard so far. And because the cop inside her wants to know, she adds, "What was her name?"

"Rose," he says immediately. "Rose Tyler. She was an Estates girl from London but she wasn't dumb like a lot of people thought because of her accent. And she did this little thing when she smiled where her tongue would poke out between her teeth." For the first time since they began talking, he looks at her and she can see he's been on the drink a bit too long. "She travelled with this other friend of mine and you should've seen the way they looked at each other, Gwen. The first time I met her we went dancing and I never even had a chance. How ridiculous is that?"

A half drunk Jack Harkness is a rare opportunity, she realizes, and gets nosier because she can. "Did you love her?"

Jack just laughs. "What, me? Love Rose Tyler?" he answers. "I'm not that stupid. That friend of ours - they were so wrapped up in each other they don't know which way was up or down. No, Rose was the type of girl that made you want to fall in love, not the girl you fall in love with. Not without the heartbreak."

"I'm sorry," she says again because she is. Really, she is. Ever since she joined Torchwood she's been thrown into impossible situation after impossible situation with no one to talk to, but this is the one that surprises her. Jack is more practical than the others, but he's traditionally not practical enough to kill a friend, even if Ianto did put everyone in danger. 

Rose Tyler must've been some girl.

"Yeah, so am I." It's more to himself than to her and he grabs a second glass, pouring her a drink too. It's not the type she likes but while he’s like this, she's not turning it down. "Gwen," he continues, sitting down again, "look, sometimes in this line of business something will take over a human body and the human inside will disappear. It doesn't matter if you recognize the face or the voice or if the person was your fucking mother - they're just go. No reasoning with them. It might hurt, but in that case the kindest thing you can do is pull the trigger. Or at least let one of us pull the trigger if you don't think you can."

"If it were her, would you be able to do it?" she asks because she doesn't want to think about Rhys. "Would you be able to kill Rose if the Cybermen upgraded her?"

"I wouldn't let it happen in the first place."

"But saying if it did."                    

The grip on his glass tightens and she's getting close to overstepping even drunk boundaries. "Yeah," he answers, pushing his fingers through his hair again. "He wouldn't be able to and she wouldn't want to live like that. If it meant saving her, I'd shoot. The mind's what makes her, not the body."

Gwen nods, looks down at the amber colored liquid sloshing around and wonders. Could she do it? He makes a valid point. She saw with her own eyes what those things did to Lisa and what effect they had on Ianto and she'd never want that to be Rhys and her. Or anyone, really. Killing doesn't sound an awful lot like saving, though, but if there's no other choice, what does it make that? Organic preservation?

Maybe Jack is braver than all of them, in the end. 

"Go home to that boyfriend of yours," he says, going back to not looking at her. "Hold on to that while you can, got it?"

She gets that it's time for her to leave and puts down her untouched glass. "I won't tell the others," she promises because she can't imagine he'd want her to. She doesn't ask if he wants her to stay.

"Good," he says and she stands, pulling her bag on her shoulder before heading to the door. She spares him one last look before leaving but his eyes stay focused on the table. 

_Rose was the type of girl that made you want to fall in love, not the girl you fall in love with._

As she leaves Torchwood, she wonders what type of person Rose Tyler must've been to make the great Jack Harkness fall in love. 


End file.
